The Secret Service exercised its usual due diligence when a posting on Facebook came to their attention. The posting was a poll asking users of the social networking site, “Should President Obama be assassinated?”
Naturally, there is a certain generation of Americans who were deeply affected by the assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. and such a threat against President Obama brings back painful memories especially amongst African-Americans who endured segregation.
When Georgia Democratic Congressman John Lewis, a hero of the Civil Rights Movement, made an appearance at Harvard University shortly after Obama’s election I asked him why he had accused the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin of “sowing the seeds of hatred and division.” Lewis told me he had no specific beef with either McCain or Palin but rather the people who attended their rallies. He said he had been aware of news reports of people chanting “kill him” at McCain and Palin rallies.
To be precise, the
incident in question was alleged to have occurred at a Sarah Palin rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania on October 14, 2008. However, Bill Slavoski, the agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton, did not hear such an utterance nor did any other Secret Service agent or local law enforcement officials in the crowd. Yet this myth remains an article of faith amongst liberals.
With such a powder keg of emotion in the air, liberal activists wasted no time in adding fuel to the fire. Democratic Party strategist Bob Beckel was quick to blame conservatives for the poll. "This is the kind of garbage that's generated from the extreme right against Obama, and it's going way over the line,"
said Beckel.
But Beckel has no evidence to support such an assertion. It is merely an assumption on his part. What if the person behind this (or for that matter any other threat against President Obama) is a young, African-American female rather than a middle-aged, white male who makes appointment television with Glenn Beck?
In September 1975, President Gerald Ford faced two assassination attempts in the space of seventeen days. Yet I cannot recall anyone in the media making the case that we should keep an extra eye out on angry, white females.
So who would want to kill the President? The fact is threats against the President of the United States, regardless of who is sitting in the Oval Office, are not at all unusual and keep the Secret Service quite occupied. In fact, the Secret Service has a special office called the
National Threat Assessment Center that devotes itself to, amongst other things, threats against the President of the United States.
President Bush has received more than his share of death threats some of which were posted
online. In 2006, a 14-year-old girl named Julia Wilson was questioned after she had posted a picture of President Bush on her
MySpace page with the caption of “Kill Bush” with a dagger stabbing his hand. No charges were pressed against Wilson.
The anger towards Bush did not abate once Obama had been elected. On December 29, 2008, just over three weeks before Bush was to leave office, a Louisiana man was arrested for threatening to kill President Bush and to blow up the White House.
Gregory Broussard, who pleaded guilty to the charges last April, could face up to five years in federal prison.
It is estimated the Secret Service investigated approximately
3,000 death threats against President Bush each year he was in office. But according to Ronald Kessler, author of the book In The President’s Secret Service, that number has gone up by 400% since Obama took office.
Yet one blogger,
zomblog, offers an interesting explanation of why this might be the case:
I contend that the media is aggressively reporting on, highlighting and pursuing any and all possible threats to President Obama — and even hints of threats — but they purposely glossed over, ignored or failed to report similar threats to President Bush.
I believe this partly accounts for the 400% increase in reported threats against Obama over those against President Bush. Part of that reported increase in investigated threats is undoubtedly due to an increase in actual threats; but part of it is almost certainly due to an increase in threats which get reported by the media and are therefore brought to the Secret Service’s attention.
One can also make the case that some threats against the President don’t get reported because the person hearing the threat doesn’t believe the person who made the threat has any intention of following through. For many years, I have recited poetry at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As someone who often defended President Bush in my poetry, I think it is safe to say that he was more reviled at the Cantab than Osama bin Laden.
The hatred towards Bush was such that I would occasionally hear someone suggest that Bush ought to be killed. These utterances were either recited in poems or during casual conversation. While I did not like what I heard, I did not alert the Secret Service. Why? The people in question had typically consumed alcoholic beverages thus their judgment was impaired. I also did not believe these people had either the wherewithal or capacity to take action. If I did believe they would act on their words I would not have hesitated to notify the Secret Service.
Dealing with kooks is one of the hazards of the Presidency. It is why the Secret Service has been protecting every President since Theodore Roosevelt. While there may be a few kooks who want to see President Obama grievously harmed nearly everyone who opposes Obama finds the idea abhorrent and immoral. Conservatives want the Obama Presidency to end at the ballot box not with a bullet hole.
Aaron Goldstein was a card carrying member of the socialist New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP). Since 09/11, Aaron has reconsidered his ideological inclinations and has become a Republican. Aaron lives and works in Boston. 
